Persecuted by war – Heinrich Schütz

1585-1672, married for only six years, two daughters, all died during the thirty years’ war holocaust, and only one small granddaughter survived of his family.

His wife and daughters died,
not able to withstand the press of war,
that kept on executing his musicians
and make music almost quite impossible
in dins of thirty years of war.
He kept escaping
from his base in Dresden,
like four hundred years much later
the most tragic of war central stages,
leaving colleagues, friends, musicians and his family
behind from pure necessity
to keep supporting them and make his living,
travelling around at random to find peace
for vocal music in the churches
that were left alone by war,
for instance Copenhagen;
and when finally the thirty years of war were over
and his friends and colleagues, church musicians,
all his family except one single daughter’s daughter
all were dead and gone and buried
in the ruins of the war-torn Germany,
he still kept on composing, working to the end,
until at last at 87 years he found his peace
by reaching up to introduce the greatest age of music,
having proved that it was better and more able to survive
than any war politics, vanity and madness,
all made null and void
by the sheer beauty of the harmony of music.